- Country: India
- Genres: Crime, Drama, History
- Release: 2000-02-18
- Director: Kamal Haasan
- Writers: H. Banerjee , Kamal Haasan , Manohar Shyam Joshi
- Language: Tamil | Hindi
- Stars: Kamal Haasan , Shah Rukh Khan , Rani Mukerji , Hema Malini , Girish Karnad , Naseeruddin Shah , Om Puri , Vikram Gokhale , Saurabh Shukla , Nasser (I)
- Runtime: 186 min
- Awards: 5 wins & 10 nominations
- AKA: Hey Ram (Singapore) , Hey Ram (United Kingdom) , Hey Ram - Augenblicke der Zärtlichkeit (Germany) , Hey Ram (India) , Hey Ram (United States of America) , Hey Ram (United Arab Emirates) , Дыхание времени (Russian Federation) , Hey Ram - Ó, Isten! (Hungary) , Hey Ram (India) , Hey Ram , O Boże! (Poland)
- Plot: The film starts with Saketh Ram as a very old man and almost immediately goes into flashback. As a young man he is among his friends, in conviviality. He has taken a Bengali wife, Aparna, and everything is wonderful in his life, However the year is 1946, and the imminent independence of India from British suzerainty is complicated by religious antagonism between the Hindu majority and the large Muslim minority, who demand their own independent state. Saketh and Aparna visit Calcutta; rioting is reported, but Saketh goes out to get some food, and he soon encounters a Hindu woman being chased by Muslim rioters. He rescues her, but the rioters later come to his house, and brutally rape and then kill his wife. Saketh is devastated and takes to the streets, determined personally to kill as many Muslims as he can find. He meets up with Sriram Abhiyankar, who is leading a group of Hindu extremists, and Saketh becomes temporarily taken with the cause himself. At the same time, he is persuaded to take a new wife, Mythili, and life begins to stabilize for Saketh after all. However he then falls in with an eminent Maharajah who is leading an underground group with the intention of assassination. Travelling with the Maharajah, Saketh meets one of his old friends from younger days, who has fallen on hard times. Reminiscing, and getting his old friend back on his feet deflect the process of recruiting Saketh, but only temporarily, and soon he is manipulated into committing himself to renouncing his family and his new wife, in the interests of the cause which now is disclosed as the assassination of Gandhi. Although a fellow Hindu, Gandhi was felt by some to be too conciliatory to Muslims and in the logic of extremists, Gandhi became the prime target. Soon Saketh is informed that Gandhi will be in Delhi for some weeks, and that Saketh is to take the opportunity to do "his duty". However, hiding from a snap search by the police, he has to hide his pistol on a delivery lorry, and it is driven away to a factory owned by Muslims. Going there hoping to retrieve the gun, he becomes engulfed in a shoot-out between some Hindu attackers and the Muslims, and finds that his loyalties are not so clear cut as he had imagined. Finally he escapes after the death of another of his old friends in the crossfire. The next day, January 30th 1948, he contrives to be near Gandhi in a public prayer ground, his appointment with destiny. But the film still has 20 minutes to run, and the ending is not what you expect.
- IMDB:tt0222012
Hey Ram Cast · · · ALL
Kamal Haasan
Director
Kamal Haasan
Saket Ram
Shah Rukh Khan
Amjad Ali Khan
Vasundhara Das
Mythili Iyengar
Rani Mukerji
Aparna Ram
Atul Kulkarni
Shriram Abhayankar
Girish Karnad
Uppilli Iyengar
Om Puri
Goel
Hema Malini
Ambujam
Naseeruddin Shah
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
Farida Jalal
Kasturba Gandhi
Vikram Gokhale
Maharaja
Saurabh Shukla
Lalwani
Nasser
(I)
Ibrahim
Abbas
Munavar
Vaali
Bhashyam Iyengar
Iravati Harshe
Nafisa
V. S. Raghavan
K.T. Chari
Delhi Ganesh
Mr. Chari
Gollapudi Maruthi Rao
Govardhan
Y.G. Mahendran
Yagyam
Vaiyapuri
Vedha
Arun Bali
Shaheed Suhrawardy
Yatin Karyekar
Qureshi
Manoj Pahwa
Jalal
Chandra Haasan
Mohan Gandhiraman